Every day, we are bombarded with over 3,000 messages in our brain including “I have to go to the bathroom,” “my wife is mad at me,” “buy x-brand water.” What are we supposed to do to compete with these messages? How do we really super glue our ideas to people’s minds?
If you think back to when you were a kid, the messages that stuck with you like “don’t play with fire,” “be nice to others,” and “crime doesn’t pay” were all illustrated with stories to which you could relate. At the end of GI Joe, you’d have the GI Joe PSA’s, Krazy Glue with the man dangling from his hat, or you would have McGruff the Crime Dog walking you through a story on how someone committed a crime, how it affected others and how it was resolved at the end. These stories stuck because the storytellers kept the message simple, focused and made the message tangible in seconds.
When you’re sharing your message, whether it’s why you should be hired for a job, why someone should purchase your product or why a person should contribute money to your cause, try this:
Use short and simple words
Tell a story with your message
Make your offer compelling
Ask for what you want
To find out how effective you are, test your message on a 5th grader. If a 5th grader is picking up what you’re putting down, that busy CEO will as well.
Remember, it’s not that people aren’t smart enough to understand what you’re offering; it’s all about telling simple stories where people can relate and will want to get on board when you pitch your offer. Let people say no to you because what you’ve offered doesn’t apply to them, not because they don’t understand what you’re selling.
Personal branding and when no one cares about you.
Who has two thumbs and...ah, nobody cares.
We live in a “me” centered society where people don’t care about you. You might even have trouble getting your family to read what you’ve written! You may be lacking in defining a personal brand for yourself. Not to worry, here are a few tips on what you can do to firm up your personal brand.
1. Start with your Strengths. We all know that there are inherent desires and passions within us that gravitate towards different subjects. You’ve known this since you were a kid. What are some of those passions that you have where you have endless levels of energy to read, research and grow? According to Marcus Buckingham, Strengths have SIGNs.
Success – You have been successful in developing this area of your life.
Instinct – There’s a natural desire in your life to do that activity.
Growth – When you do the activity, you get better than the last time.
Needs – You have a desire to do the activity again.
Once you’ve framed your Strengths, you can use that as your basis for your personal branding. What’s exciting about it is that you have a natural drive to learn more and share more about those subjects. For me, I love business and consumer level technology, so you’ll notice that that’s what I talk about. What can you hang your hat on?
2. To drive your personal branding you need two basic prongs – content and channels. The content includes the blog posts you write, the tweets you send out, the comments you leave for others, the updates you provide on social networks. What people sometimes forget is that content spans audio and video. Your personal brand becomes even richer when you provide photos, video and audio. These forms of communication should drive forward your brand that you’ve developed from your strengths.
3. Channels are the places where your content can be found. Are you on Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Plaxo, YouTube, 12seconds, etc? You don’t have to be everywhere, you just should be where the eyeballs are and where you can be effective. Pick those places, then bundle them all together with websites like Google Profiles, FriendFeed, Ping.fm and PeoplePond. These sites let you consolidate your online presence and some will even let you send your updates to your other sites. When you update from one to the others, you should be careful – use this sparingly, as your followers can get annoyed from too many updates. The bonus, however, is that the Google and the other search engines love this stuff and it will make you even easier to find, especially if you use a consistent name or brand.
The bottom line is that you need to do personal branding for yourself regarding topics that you’re passionate about. Once you’ve determined those strengths, pump your content through your channels. *Thanks to Dan Schawbel’s comment, I realized I wasn’t explicit about mentioning that your personal brand is not all about you. People care when the content you provide fulfills their needs versus having a platform for self promotion. Now GO!
What are some tips and tricks that I have left out? I’d love to get your input!
